So, Mueller has indicted 13 Russian nationals and three entities. Let’s look at this a bit closer. In an indictment announced Friday in Washington, Mueller describes a years-long, multimillion-dollar conspiracy by hundreds of Russians aimed at criticizing Hillary Clinton and supporting Senator Bernie Sanders and Trump. More accurate, I suspect, would be to s […]

If I were Hillary, I would have picked up right where I left off in 2008 at the end of the primary season. That was when she was the strongest as an appealing candidate and her campaign message of making the invisible Americans count again meant something. She was feeling her Cheerios. It wasn’t her fault that the nomination was awarded to someone else through inflated caucuses, superhuman amounts of money from the finance industry, short-sighted superdelegates and DNC rules skullduggery.

Has she completely forgotten that she went to Denver in a statistical tie with Obama? Did she forget how the party prevented California and Pennsylvania from casting ballots during the roll call just in case it looked like she might actually have a good reason for a floor fight? Are we the only ones who remember that it was NOT a landslide at the convention for Obama, not even close?

Really, Hillary, you have to believe this. No one on this blog and some other blogs is stupid enough to believe that Obama “won” the nomination through the strength of his amazing campaign strategy or scintillating personality. Even as recently as last night, I run into people who absolutely. can. not. stand. him. because they don’t find him charismatic, interested in average Americans, or politically talented. These are *Democrats*, in local Democratic organizations. They loathe him. It’s not racism. It’s well founded, completely rational disgust with the way he campaigned and the opportunities that were handed to him on a plate that he squandered.

Yup, completely unsolicited loathing of the guy who weaponized accusations of racism and smothered real criticism from his own side for 8 long years. The Dirty F^&*ing Hippies are now getting together and comparing notes. How did Hillary miss that??

And then there is the subject of his legacy, which no one I know likes. Maybe it’s because I don’t hang out with the DailyKos crowd anymore. Eight years of Bush followed by eight years of a weak and compromised Obama who blew two years of a Democratic majority in the House and Senate has left almost everyone I know more economically insecure and twitchy. It’s even more insecure if you’re younger and you’re saddled with student debt the size of a mortgage and see very shaky job prospects for decades to come.

So, why in Hell would Hillary Clinton hitch her wagon to Obama’s star? It is a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

This is the year when many Americans are finally figuring out that they have been eating grass. Even the seniors who have never met an abortion opponent they didn’t like are finally realizing something’s not right.

The Obama campaign apparatus oversold their strategy and prior success. It was illusory anyway. Charlotte’s Web is so over. And Hillary should have known that and done a whole lot more listening before she rolled out a campaign that was targeted to aspirational small business entrepreneurs and suburban working moms.

She is missing the big picture and bigger opportunity: It’s the income instability, stupid.

Focus on that.

Oh, and David Axelrod looks like a rat. Someone needs to stuff a sock in his mouth. I swear, the old Obama campaign people are out to get her. They need to go. Bring back Peter Daou.

Update: I’m finding it amusing that the NYTimes editorial page seems to be in full blown panic over the prospect of a Trump presidency and is now trying to get Hillary to keep her chin up. It’s all fun and games with the relentless “scandals” until a dangerous narcissist starts winning the primaries, eh Gail?

If you haven’t read this post by Digby at Hullabaloo on the media gearing up to use the 2008 election campaign tactics as a way to crush women politicians in 2016, go read it now. I’ll wait.

In this one post, Digby comes so close to seeing the political landscape the way we did back in 2008. What she writes makes perfect sense but at the last moment, the thought-stopping conditioning springs into action and she calls anyone who draws the obvious conclusions racists.

I don’t have time to clear this up for her but I will say that we called the phenomenon that she is describing as “Penis Years” back in 2008. That is, no woman, no matter how much experience she has, regardless of her accomplishments, is as qualified as a man who simply wants the job. The presence of a penis adds eight to ten years of authority to his CV over any female that gets uppity enough to get in his way. This is hardly relegated to politics. It’s rampant in the private sector as well.

As for the racism aspect of all this, that’s in the mind of the beholder and that was the whole point of the 2008 campaign exercises. There are some Democrats who saw two potential interest group constituencies and through clever messaging, made sure that sexism was combined with the desire to finish the Civil Rights movement. It’s called marketing.

I think we can all agree after six long, painful years that Obama was not ready to be president, that his candidacy was rushed by some self-interested financial industry donors and that he has been the most conservative Democratic president of our lifetimes. He got the nomination using Penis Years reasoning and his campaign was ruthless in describing anyone who opposed him as a racist. The fact that some political scientists are making a bungling mess of pointing out this reality doesn’t make it less true. The legacy of the 2008 “Bros vs Hos” campaign is going to haunt the first woman nominee no matter who she is. We will be lead to wonder whether another inexperienced, less than competent in a time of economic crisis president is going to be shoved down our throats to satisfy some politically correct teachable moment.

You can pretend this is not true but when both Amanda Marcotte and Digby start writing posts about Penis Years in the lead up to 2016, they are actually acknowledging this fact.

The Republicans have a stranglehold on the House, might take over the Senate and the only thing standing between them and our social security benefits is Barack Obama.

Cue the panicked screaming.

What’s even scarier is there are Fox News watchers who are so soaked in lies and delusion that they will have absolutely no idea what hit them until it’s too late. A lot of very bad things could happen in two years. On the other hand, maybe the Republicans have to have free reign so people can see what they’re really all about. Telling people not to watch Fox doesn’t seem to be working. It just might take some very, very tough love and a heavy dose of betrayal before they get it. Of course, this might be the last time many people have an easy time voting. Once they’re in power, it will be more difficult to dislodge them. All bets are off for voting in 2016, especially for women. Because if I were the Republican party, I’d busily get behind initiatives to make it much harder for women and poor people to vote. I mean, harder than it is now. Much harder.

Bill and Bill talk about Eric Holder’s resignation and, specifically, why it was that Holder did not prosecute any bankers. That’s right, not one.

Black gets right to the point about who is to blame:

BILL MOYERS: No, the, what you’re saying is that more than one administration cooperated in maintaining a system that is based upon deference to the banks and disrespect for the public.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Right, and, but it’s also a component in the case of Obama of we’re humans and we are, everything we learn in research about humans is we’re reciprocal. And so the finance area is the reason he’s president of the United States. When he was in his hour of greatest need, when he had, was written off as a candidate against Hillary in the nomination battle the first time around, he had this miraculous survival. And that took money.

That took lots and lots of money. And who gave that money? It came overwhelmingly from finance at the critical moment when he needed it most. All of us as human beings, the people that helped us in, a friend in need is a friend indeed is the saying that we have as human beings.

THIS is what I have been saying all along. The finance industry *knew* in advance that the crash was coming and they wanted an enabler in office, not someone who might send them to rehab. But I’m a racist and Bill Black is not.

I’ve written a couple of times about ZMapp, the monoclonal antibody treatment for ebola infection. Short summary: ZMapp is a cocktail of three monoclonal antibodies, in other words, human proteins, that were genetically engineered to grow in tobacco plants. Yes, it sounds like FrankenPharma but it’s perfectly normal to do it this way. ZMapp is produced by company in San Diego. In it’s PR blurb from January of this year, the company producing it, known as Mapp Biopharmaceuticals, indicated that they had tested ZMapp in 7 primates, 4 of which died. If you are assuming that all primates will die of ebola, that’s not too bad but in the current outbreak, the lethality is about 60% so this result is nothing to write home about. (note that the in the Business Insider article linked below, the company claims to have improved their success rate in primates but there’s still no proof that it works in humans.) In other words, the public is grasping at this very early research as if it were the holy grail and it’s not. The best thing about ZMapp is that it draws attention to the fact that our research for infectious diseases is woefully underfunded.

And scientists acknowledge that despite the new efforts, they may not be able to produce more than a few hundred treatment courses by early next spring. That will be far behind the international demand and will confront officials with life-and-death challenges of rationing and priorities.

“The biology just doesn’t allow you to do it tomorrow,” Alan Magill, a programme director at the Gates Foundation which is helping to organise ZMapp development, told The New York Times .

[…]

The doses with which the US aid workers were treated were manufactured from biologically-engineered tobacco leaves grown at a facility in Kentucky, but it only has extremely limited production capacity.

Officials with the Department of Health and Human Services are now in advanced talks with a Texas company that could produce the drug in millions of tobacco plants.

The New York Times also reported that the US government and two of the world’s biggest charities — the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust – are in talks to arrange for production of ZMapp in animal cells. That is a more conventional production method in the biotechnology industry and could allow for greater overall production, but the initial stages of development will take longer. “We’re going with multiple manufacturers,” a federal official said,

“That’s why we don’t have an Ebola countermeasure,” said Robert Kadlec, a consultant and public health physician who held high-level posts in biodefence in the Bush administration. “We failed to invest enough dollars to have it mature.”

Part of that failure to invest might have something to do with Republican assholes writing Op/Eds in the NYTimes claiming that you’re washed up as a scientist after the age of 36 , which is about 4 years after you finish your last starvation diet salaried post-doc. After that age, you don’t deserve the limited funding from NIH grants as some young whippersnapper who has just started his career (and has about 4 years to make his name in the world before it’s all over). Funny, I started feeling my mental cheerios about two years before I was laid off. Whatever. Ahhh, Republicans, always expecting to get some new major breakthrough from hard working intelligent people without spending any money at all. Typical. I’m going to address that idiotic Op/Ed at a later time, once my blood pressure has returned to normal.

Like I said yesterday, if production of ZMapp is really that crucial, the government or the Gates Foundation can hire a couple thousand currently unemployed, laid off American pharma researchers who used to do protein production. Or they can let us just sit on our asses while Rome burns. Their choice.

In the meantime, I’ve read a post on another blog that suggests that there is a new conspiracy theory about the availability of Zmapp. According to this theory, the Dallas ebola patient, Thomas Duncan, is not getting Zmapp not because Mapp ran out of supply. No, he’s not getting it because he’s black. In fact, there’s discrimination going on and that’s why black people won’t be getting it.

uh-huh

That’s ridiculous and stupid and anyone who thinks that or spreads that rumor has not been paying attention to the logistics of producing this cocktail of human proteins in tobacco plants.

To the contrary, I would go so far as to say that the only person in the United States who probably has a stash of ZMapp for his own personal use is a black man. In fact, the White House physicians and Surgeon General wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t corner the market on whatever was left for the president’s exclusive use. It only makes sense. You don’t want your president dying on you from ebola. (This possibility is extremely remote but he does shake a lot of hands) It’s bad optics and it’s bad for the country, assuming he can actually get ahead of this crisis and be proactive on this one thing after six years of being constantly behind the curve, too cautious and deferential to the ultra wealthy on every other crisis.

So, you know there’s that.

In general though, Americans should continue to think of ebola as a disease without a cure. If you get it, you will have to rely on your body’s own defenses to fight it off. So, don’t get it. Racism has nothing to do with it. Racism *might* have something to do with poorer people having access to insurance or health care in Texas and several other states. But when the ZMapp is gone, you can’t make tobacco plants grow any faster, no matter who you are or how much money you’ve got.

Mr. Obama is fast becoming the past, not the future, for donors, activists and Democratic strategists. Party leaders are increasingly turning toward Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, as Democrats face difficult races this fall in states where the president is especially unpopular, and her aides are making plain that she has no intention of running for “Obama’s third term.”

Thank goodness for that. I don’t think I can take another four years of careless conservatism spouting from the mouths of clueless young Ivy League males. We have been waiting for six long years to hear what Clinton really thinks about Obama. Yeah, it was great that she was able to swallow her pride and anger and play nice for the sake of “unity” but enough’s enough. Even if she doesn’t run, I am looking forward to her informed critique.

I especially like the bit where Clinton says “ ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle,”

Amen to that.

I am desperate to hear someone talk about their organizing principles. No, I am not kidding. That “put everything on the table and we’ll negotiate” crap has been an utter disaster. And like Katiebird, I’d like the conversation to move away from foreign policy to economics.

On the other hand, this is probably not the best way to raise a lot of money from political donors who want to retain their iron grip on all the money in the universe. Let’s hope Clinton can convince some of them that it’s in their best interests.

The Party, on the other hand, seems to think this is still 2008 before the crash:

Christine Pelosi, a longtime Democratic activist and daughter of the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, said her phone and email “just exploded” after Mrs. Clinton’s remarks.

“Now is not the time to second guess the commander in chief, particularly when you’re a former member of his cabinet and national security team,” Ms. Pelosi said.

Oooo, really? And when would the best time be, Christine? I mean, he’s already opened up the tax payer safe to the finance industry, took a backseat to the foreclosure crisis and long term unemployment, presided over the dismantling of our research and development sector, and locked us into a two tier class system when it comes to health insurance. When is any Democrat allowed to criticize him? No one ever gave Bill Clinton that kind of deference.

Anyway, here’s to a little high tension. It’s about fricking time.

Additional thoughts: We were the target of a troll attack yesterday. It was wildly fun, by the way. Katiebird and I are just warming up. Bring it on. But we did wonder what the heck triggered it. It reminded both of us of the days in 2008 when the Obot trolls fired barrage after barrage from different IP addresses. In fact, we both thought it was a good idea that we hadn’t gotten rid of those addresses in the banned list for the spam filter. Now, we can go through the IPs at our leisure and figure out if there’s a common thread.

But it does make us wonder, why bother? Obama isn’t running for another term, we don’t have nearly the readership that we had in 2008 when we peaked at something like 56000 hits/per day. And the left has not sought to deign us with the pleasure of their revenue stream by adding us to their blog rolls. In fact, I’d say we were true blue all the way through the last six years but hardly worth the effort and attention.

And yet, in spite of our anonymity compared to 2008, we still seem relevant enough to send a bunch of psych-out shock troops. We can’t dismiss the possibility of a Republican attack but yesterday’s seemed so familiar. It left that whiff of O-zone behind it.

tdraicer brought this post by Andrew O’Hehir at Salon to my attention. Poor Andrew is just so disillusioned that Obama turned out to perpetuate George Bush’s policies. It’s especially painful because the primary reason O’Hehir and his buddies voted for Obama was his position on the Iraq War. Actually, did we even know what Obama’s position on the war was? I mean, he said he was agin’ it but we don’t have him on the record voting for anything. And from my recollection, there were plenty of Democrats willing to overlook John Edwards Iraq War vote but not Hillary’s. Hmmmm, curiouser and curiouser. Well, anyway, let’s just say that I don’t believe that the vote on the Iraq War was the only reason they spat upon Hillary and hitched their wagons to Obama’s star.

Putting aside the latent sexism lurking in the Democratic party, I suspect one of the most influential factors in the primary campaign of 2008 was the degree to which the Obama campaign was willing to fluff the egos of people like Andrew O’Hehir. Remember how they were called the “creative class”? They shopped at Whole Foods? They drank PBR? They were smarter, more attractive, funnier, moraler and just better people? I used to call them the “swimsuit models with PhDs in architecture” while we were “the stupid, uneducated, menopausal, working class, sino-peruvian lesbians”.

Struggling with Links, Blockquotes, images or videos?

Body: Last week I went down to Washington, D.C. to deliver a paper at a conference in the technical field where I worked, ten years or so and two or three careers ago, before the dot.com trash. The trip was solely an exercise in merit-making, since I doubt very much I'll get work in the field, but reconnecting with old friends was really great -- even […]

Last month's weird story about a raid on Newsweek/IBT offices was followed by David Sirota's announcement that he was resigning the publications. It seems management was playing a bit fast and loose with the laws on fraud and money laundering. "Newsweek's Top Editors and a Reporter Let Go Amid Turmoil: Less than a week after both the chai […]